Heterogeneous bipartite quantum pure states, composed of two subsystems with a different number of levels, cannot have both reductions maximally mixed. In this work, we demonstrate the existence of a wide range of highly entangled states of heterogeneous multipartite systems consisting of $N>2$ parties such that every reduction to one and two parties is maximally mixed. Two constructions of generating genuinely multipartite maximally entangled states of heterogeneous systems for an arbitrary number of subsystems are presented. Such states are related to quantum error correction codes over mixed alphabets and mixed orthogonal arrays. Additionally, we show the advantages of considering heterogeneous systems in practical implementations of multipartite steering.

• Received 12 May 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.012346